WRNO rocked local talk radio a year ago when it took Rush Limbaugh from powerhouse WWL

Jim Sulley / AP Photo Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh prepares for his daily radio show in his New York studio.

Wednesday will mark one year since Rush Limbaugh moved from WWL to WRNO, and both stations have happy anniversary stories to tell.

The WWL AM-870 and FM-105.3 simulcast remains the dominant news-talk outlet in town despite the sizable void left by the departure of Limbaugh's loyal audience.

By wresting Limbaugh from his longtime local home and rebranding itself "Rush Radio," WRNO FM-99.5 has created a competitive news-talk station -- at least at midday Monday-through-Friday -- where before there was none.

As a rule, urban-format stations rule the New Orleans airwaves.

Though there was some expectation that hip-hop and R&B stations WQUE FM-93.3 and WYLD FM-98.5 would fade post-Katrina -- in part due to dispersed listeners, in part to presumably heightened interest in recovery talk -- the return of radio ratings to the six-parish metro market in mid-2006 showed they hadn't, and little has changed in the years since.

Both of those stations stayed atop the overall listener charts in the most recent full ratings period available -- for October, November and December 2008.

The combined numbers for WWL AM and FM were good for third place overall, followed by easy-listening WLMG FM-101.9 and country WNOE FM-101.1.

Arbitron measures radio ratings by weekly written diaries delivered and returned by U.S. mail, technologies seemingly artifacts from a different era.

By chance, the ratings service picked me, via random phone call, to be one of the metro area's approximately 2,900 diary-keepers for one week during the fall quarter (October, November, December) from which the ratings featured in this package of stories were garnered.

My literally firsthand experience with the survey system highlighted some of its pitfalls. The diary arrived in a slick little box accompanied by several crisp on dollar bills. Described as "a token of our appreciation" in an accompanying brochure, the bills are the only compensation Arbitron survey participants receive.

The service made several polite phone calls to my home before, during and after my big week as radio-ratings decider to remind me A) that the packet was coming, B) to make sure I was filling it out once it arrived and C) to mail it off when the week was over.

Radio stations pay Arbitron for its data, from which is culled specific demographic listener information that divides the audience by gender, age and ethnicity to be used by stations that target specific audiences for advertisers.

The diary data are translated into measurements of "share," which is the average percentage of the total listening audience in each quarter-hour tuned to a particular station, and "cume," which is total listeners in a week. ("Cume is how many people come in your store each week," explained one local ratings analyst. "Share is how many people are in your store at any particular time.")

Arbitron can tell from its diaries that the share for WKBU FM-95.7's Houston-based "The Walton & Johnson Show" makes it the market's No. 1 morning show in its demographic target, men ages 25-54. (The show's cume is No. 2 in the time slot in that demo. In overall audience, which Arbitron designates as all listeners ages 12 or older, the show's share ranks No. 4, cume No. 6.)

And WRNO FM-99.5 syndicated talker Rush Limbaugh beats his former home, the WWL AM-870 and FM-105.3 simulcast, when share is the measure (see related story), but trails the talk hosts on his old frequency in cume.

None of this arcane stuff was mentioned in my packet.

"You are one of the very few selected in your area to tell stations what you listen to or why you choose not to listen," said the brochure, which asked diary-keepers to note the time listening, the station call letters and the place where listening occurred (home, work, car), with a separate place on the form for side-comments.

In theory, simple enough. In practice, not. Arbitron knows that all of their diary-keepers don't carry their paperwork every place they're likely to encounter a radio signal, even for a week.

I didn't, so there was a reckoning each day -- or, to be honest, sometimes every couple of days -- of what I listened to, where and when. My radio listening patterns at home are pretty set. A few minutes in the morning (mostly National Public Radio on WWNO FM-89.9 and local talk radio), midday in the kitchen at lunch (talk radio again) and sometimes a little while in the evening if I'm in the kitchen and it's my turn to fix dinner (NPR again, or WWOZ FM-90.7). In the car, it's usually news-talk.

So the irregular recaps were easy, if not to-the-minute accurate. Stations repeat their call letters ad nauseam because the ratings system requires participants to remember exact times and stations, and my diary week was the only time I've ever found that practice helpful, which is the whole point of the repetition.

There was a temptation to boost the diary reports for noncommercial favorites WWNO and WWOZ or even WRBH FM-88.3, but I resisted, perhaps due to the responsibility-reinforcing presence of those one dollar bills.

Still, at the end of the week, the diary I returned by postage-paid envelope was a fair representation of who and what I had heard.

Arbitron is in the process of rolling out an electronic ratings gathering system, the Portable People Meter, or PPM, which should provide the service with more precise data, though the PPMs aren't expected to be deployed in New Orleans until some time in next year.

When they arrive, ratings will be gathered via a cell-phone-sized device worn by survey participants that will detect and record silent codes embedded in each station's audio stream, with the results uploaded to Arbitron daily.

"(The diary system) is recall, and we do the best that we can on recall," said Dick Lewis, market manager for Clear Channel, WRNO's owner. "The PPM is instantaneous sampling of what the device picks up."

Next came WRNO, which thanks to Limbaugh (and to a lesser degree Sean Hannity's mid-afternoon syndicated show) has more than doubled its overall audience in the past year (see related ratings chart) while moving from the market's No. 11 station to No. 6.

In November 2006, WRNO shifted its format from classic rock to news-talk, boasting a talent lineup filled with personalities with local ties, including former mayoral candidate Rob Couhig and former Louisiana Commissioner of Insurance Jim Brown in the mornings, and former TV newswoman Andre Trevigne at midday.

Daniel Erath / The Times-Picayune Rush Limbaugh now edges both WWL's Garland Robinette and John "Spud" McConnell during his 11 a.m.-to-2 p.m. time slot.

A year ago, the emphasis on local talent went away with the addition of Limbaugh at midday and newly imported hosts in morning (Michael Castner, Robyn Walensky) and evening (John Osterlind) drive times.

Local topics -- politics, mostly -- still dominate the conversation in mornings and early evenings on WRNO, but WRNO has yet to make much of a dent in WWL's ratings in those time slots.

Castner and Walensky draw a fraction of WWL's audience at 5 a.m., and increase the fraction slightly from 6 a.m. on. Osterlind, though improving his time slot's ratings in the past year, draws a little more than half the average audience won by WWL's late-afternoon sports talk.

But Limbaugh now edges both WWL's Garland Robinette and John "Spud" McConnell during his 11 a.m.-to-2 p.m. time slot.

Hannity held his own, but the station's early lineup of mostly local talent "did not do well in the ratings," Lewis said. "It did marginal, if I can be charitable to it.

"Nothing that we could've done, because we did everything we could, would've answered what Rush has brought to the radio station."

Still, WWL's locally focused talk -- a brand the station has reinforced through marketing efforts both on and off its own air -- remains a ratings force.

Limbaugh's audience departed WWL en masse for WRNO, but somehow didn't significantly dent WWL's daytime ratings overall -- a triumph for WWL, given the interest in Limbaugh's national-politics-heavy show during and after the presidential election.

"We're really strongly committed to a live and local image," said Chris Claus, the New Orleans market manager for Entercom Corp., WWL's Pennsylvania-based owner.